Well, The Washington Post published a blockbuster story last night indicating that, yes, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democrat National Committee who put up the dirty dossier dollars. Now we know why Fusion was in court trying to conceal who funded the fake dossier they created, as well as invoking the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

Predictably, The Post was more interested in promoting the latest “Republican Party fissure” — more criticism of Donald Trump by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). More on that later.

It’s no surprise that Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, through Democrat law firm Perkins Coie, retained Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research that resulted in the now-infamous dossier. After Clinton’s retention, Fusion hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to conduct that research. The resulting fake dossier became the centerpiece not only of the entire Trump/Russia collusion delusion but of James Comey’s — and now Robert Mueller’s — investigation. In fact, Comey took the dossier to Barack Obama after the election, and reportedly agreed to pay Steele for further research — an offer rescinded when Steele was publicly identified. Was/is Comey that stupid?

One other question congressional Republican investigators have is whether the FBI used the dossier as justification for any surveillance intercepts. The Bureau has so far refused to answer that question.

As Byron York notes, “And why did the story break when it did? Credit the much-maligned Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The California Republican has been pursuing the dossier more aggressively than anyone else, and it was his Oct. 4 subpoena for the bank records of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that handled the dossier, that finally shook loose the information.”

So, rather than Trump’s campaign colluding with Moscow, it turns out the real collusion was between Clinton and Russia, as parts of the dossier were scripted by Russian security services. That kind of makes Trump Jr.‘s meeting with a Russian lawyer pale in comparison. And as for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, it could be that he’s ensnared in Mueller’s investigation not because of his ties to Trump but because of his ties to John Podesta. More on that later.

According to former Bush White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, “We now know [Hillary Clinton] paid for international dirt [on an opponent] that ended up going through America’s intelligence agencies, as well as Comey’s FBI and to Obama, where they all treated it with credibility … only to learn now that the source for this, the funding for it, the impetus behind it, was Hillary Clinton’s campaign. This is very troubling if the FBI didn’t know that the funding for this came from Clinton’s campaign.”

Brian Fallon, a former spokesman for the Clinton campaign, basically claimed as Obama always did that he heard about the dossier in the news. “But if I had gotten handed it last fall, I would have had no problem passing it along and urging reporters to look into it,” Fallon added. “Opposition research happens on every campaign, and here you had probably the most shadowy guy ever running for president, and the FBI certainly has seen fit to look into it. I probably would have volunteered to go to Europe myself to try and verify if it would have helped get more of this out there before the election.”

The DNC responded by also pointing the finger back at Trump: “Let’s be clear, there is a serious federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and the American public deserves to know what happened.” But let me be clear: As I have also argued all along, Democrats needed to be cautious what they wished for. Their sole aim was to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election. Now that Clinton’s hand was in the cookie jar, I’m willing to bet Democrats no longer think Russian interference heralds the end of the republic.

The news almost makes it humorous that a protester got close enough to Trump Tuesday to throw Russian flags at him and yell, “Trump is treason!” Out on a limb, but I’m guessing he voted for Hillary.

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